Eavesdropping Hasn’t Harmed Image of U.S.

By MARJORIE CONNELLY

July 21, 2014

It almost seems as if President Obama has run into nothing but trouble overseas, facing criticism over electronic eavesdropping, drone strikes and his handling of regional conflicts. Yet the image of the president, and of the United States, have suffered little harm, according to a Pew Global Attitudes survey.

In Rome in March, people waved at the motorcade as President Obama went to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Doug Mills / The New York Times

Documents provided by the fugitive National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have identified both the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, as targets of eavesdropping by the N.S.A. Despite that, a majority in Germany and Brazil continue to hold a positive view of Mr. Obama, yet the percentage of Brazilians and Germans who have confidence that he will do the right thing with foreign policy has declined by 17 percentage points in each country.

Mr. Obama also lost ground in Russia, where he wasn’t particularly well thought of to begin with. Only 15 percent of people there have confidence in the American president’s handling of international affairs, down from 29 percent last year, according to the poll.

Attitudes toward Mr. Obama’s handling of foreign policy are generally positive in the Western European, Asian and African countries surveyed, but opinion is divided in Latin America. Other than Israelis, few in the Middle East have confidence in his leadership.

And the Israelis’ faith in Mr. Obama has grown in recent years. In 2009, 56 percent had confidence in his handling of world affairs; that fell to 49 percent in 2011. But in 2013, confidence in Mr. Obama rebounded as 61 percent trusted his handling of world affairs, and it’s up again in the latest poll to 71 percent.

In most countries, Mr. Obama is no longer held in the same high regard as he was just after his inauguration in January 2009. But his standing is still in sharp contrast with views of the American president eight years ago, when George W. Bush received relatively low marks. The overall image of the United States during that time was also fairly negative, as there was broad opposition to the war in Iraq.

The current poll is based on 48,643 interviews in 44 countries conducted with adults by telephone or in person between March 17 and June 5. The margin of sampling error ranges from 3 to 5 percentage points for each country.

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